


The Nothing I've Become

by poisontaster



Category: Heroes (TV)
Genre: Captivity, Dark, Drug Addiction, Gen, Imprisonment, Non-Consensual Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-14
Updated: 2006-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-15 18:29:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2239011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't know what's worse; being forced down into the ugly world of his dreams or waking to a nightmare just as horrifying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nothing I've Become

Isaac dreams.

They're not pleasant dreams. Not anymore; he dreams in colors of blood and fire and ash, chiaroscuros of murky morality, the shiny of smug self-righteousness. His blind, filmed eyes follow false perspectives of broken flesh and shattered bone into infinity and sometimes, sometimes, he almost forgets he has a body he must return to. A body bound to this stinking crib with its infinite supplies of paint, canvas, pencils and pads.

The paintings themselves, the sketches, the rare sculpture…they all disappear. He knows how they do it but if he thinks about it too long, he thinks he'll go mad. Not that he's entirely certain he isn't anyway. Aren't all artists mad anyway?

He thinks things must be worse. Outside. Not that they tell him anything, trapped in this room with only the blank face of the mirror for company. But he guesses it doesn't matter. The drugs come more often now, always so carefully measured so that the dose, the high, doesn't push him past his usefulness. They've had years to practice, after all. Trial and error. But he spends more and more time dream-state, creating art he never sees and waking with the cool grittiness of paint or charcoal smudging his fingers, blobbed under his nails. It never washes off completely.

He doesn't know what's worse; being forced down into the ugly world of his dreams or waking to a nightmare just as horrifying. His body is thin and wasted, his hair often dirty, pulled back with an elastic band that has no metal edges so he can't try to hurt himself with it. They think of everything.

When he's not high, not blown out of his mind, not _somewhere else_ , he can't even bring himself to touch the sticks of pastel and charcoal. He doesn't slide his hands, his fingertips, over the pages of cold-pressed paper, he doesn't discover the texture of the canvases.

The sight of them turns him sick and quivery, the instruments of his torture. And somehow that hurts the worst, worse than knowing what's being done to him, worse than who is behind the impassive glass, worse than knowing—suspecting—what's going on in the world outside. (God, _outside_ ) Once upon a time, his art was all he had. Now he doesn't even have that.

Not even that.

Sometimes, he'll paint over the observation window; thick swirls of tempura and oil that must be a bitch to get off. It gives little enough satisfaction; petty revenges are all he has left. He paints obscene things, bloated and grotesque. He paints the faces he only dimly remembers, usually through a haze of Lethe and the stench of turpentine. He paints the world he barely remembers, full of blue skies and lush green trees. He paints mangoes, like his mother would cut for him, and they look almost like sunshine. They never stop him.

And then later, sometime later, inevitably later, Peter will come, with the syringe and the tourniquet and it all starts again.  


**Author's Note:**

> Word prompt was: **Knave.**


End file.
